The present invention relates to a system for creating and retrieving feedback and rating information for products, services, and product or service providers using telecommunications systems, and more particularly, to a mobile cellular and/or wireline communications system for providing and retrieving community-generated feedback and rating information based on user-defined communities. The system is operable in conjunction with a user location determiner and a user data input/output device.
A xe2x80x9ccommunityxe2x80x9d as used herein is defined as any group of people who are associated by some common factor, or factors, who are users of communication products and services, and who may derive added value from an evaluation service through the use of these telephones in relation to their activities while they are travelling. A xe2x80x9cmobile communityxe2x80x9d as used herein is defined as a group of community members who are also users of cellular telephones. Since these cellular telephone users are also consumers, they are faced with the choice of which product or service to purchase and from which provider.
xe2x80x9cMobile Commercexe2x80x9d, that is, trade based on usage of cellular handsets for the purchase or sale of products and services, is becoming an increasingly important element in commercial transactions. Although a cellular telephone is most often physically with its owner, its potential to provide its user with recommendations and rating information for a service, a product or a product or service provider has not been exploited. In particular, there does not appear to be any existing method or system which generates feedback or rating information while getting the input from community members.
Although, in workstation-based computer communications there are Internet web sites that provide and are able to receive feedback for a specific issue, such as restaurants, conventional systems do not appear to embrace a method or device that will gather and provide ratings and feedback to and from a cellular device to cellular community members. Internet web types of feedback are neither community-based nor cellular-based and also do not have a database for a wide variety of products, services, or product or service providers.
Existing Internet-based feedback systems may provide feedback or ratings, but these are not always available for a user. The feedback can be entered only after a user has the opportunity to physically go to where a PC is located, a PC, that is, that a user is authorized to use. Thus, feedback will not always be entered and many impressions related to a particular experience involving transactions for products and services and their providers can be forgotten until a user gets to his or her PC.
Those who rely on laptops can more readily retrieve and provide feedback, but since this feedback is also generated over the Internet and is not user-community specific or organized, except in very broad user categories in so-called xe2x80x9cvirtual communitiesxe2x80x9d, a laptop user may not be provided with relevant information for his or her particular needs or from his or her particular community group. A xe2x80x9cuser-communityxe2x80x9d, as defined herein, is one specifically composed of those who are engaged in some common, activity, such as mobile communication, and share at least one common attribute, affiliation, or association with others in the group, and who have but are not necessarily related via an Internet connection. A mobile telephone user, for example, can be characterized as present in a particular location at a particular time, whereas one engaged in a virtual community need not be location or time dependent.
Furthermore, existing feedback systems have all users in the same group, thus when someone needs a recommendation or rating for a service or product, a user might receive incorrect or unreliable information as a user might get it from a group of people who have completely different interests or affiliations. Therefore, a recommendation based on their feedback may not be relevant. For example, if one is looking for a good restaurant for a business meeting, one would not like to go to a restaurant for tourists even if it received the highest rating in town, because most of the evaluators were tourists.
A businessman would prefer to get a recommendation for a restaurant for a business meeting from his business colleagues who probably belong to one of his communities.
Furthermore, as existing solutions do not define communities as defined above, the amount of information retrieved for qualitative feedback from virtual communities may be so great as to be unusable. The extent of the information provided makes it almost impossible to navigate within this database, since such information will not have been generated by like-users in specific locations and will have filtering and sorting problems in order to find recommendations which a user can trust.
Also, existing solutions do not integrate newly-available technologies, such as a wireless electronic pen and an electronic writing pad, to enable providing of feedback using freehand drawing and writing.
New, emerging, cellular technologies, such as General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Enhanced Data GSM Environment (EDGE), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), and the like, now enable a cellular telephone to communicate qualitative feedback, including voice, video, image, text, and the like, however, this feedback has thus far not been of the type which exploits the feedback and rating information potential of users in user-communities.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system for generating mobile community feedback and ratings based on user-defined communities of interest using a wireless pen and an electronic writing pad in cooperation with mobile telephone users communicating over their cellular telephones. Feedback may also be generated or retrieved by users of traditional wireline communication products and services, such as a wireline telephone, a PC,.or a PDA.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art and to provide a user-friendly network system for providing and retrieving feedback and rating information in realtime in regard to products, services, or the providers of products or services, based on one or more user-defined communities of interest, the network system comprising a data input device operable to facilitate entry of data by a user, a user location determiner operable to determine the location of the user, a first interface operable to provide feedback categories and rating information associated with the data entered by a user, a second interface operable to retrieve feedback and rating information and present them to a user, a feedback and rating information server in communication with the data input device operable to process this data, a communities server in communication with the data input device and operable to provide details about communities with which the user defines a relationship, and a location server in communication with the user location determiner and operable to provide details of providers of products and services in relation to the user location.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for providing and retrieving feedback and rating information in regard to products and services, and providers of products and services comprising the steps of entering feedback data corresponding to at least one of a product, service, and providers thereof, into a telecommunications device, transmitting this feedback data to a database via a network, locating a physical location of a user entering this data, providing the user""s physical location to a database, storing information relative to different user""s attributes in a server, and processing the data with the previously stored information such that quantitative and qualitative feedback data for at least one of similar products, services and provide thereof are organized in accordance with pre-selected community requirements.
Another object of the invention is to provide a mobile device for creating and retrieving feedback and rating information, such device comprising a data input device for inputting feedback information, a display for viewing a feedback creation or retrieval form, and a transmitter and receiver operable to transmit and receive the information.
A further object of the invention is to provide a location server within a network system for providing and retrieving feedback and rating information in real-time in regard to products, services, or the providers of products or services, such location server rationally utilizing the location of various services and products in comparison with the current location of a user of the network server.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide a method for creating a new input for a new product or a service, or for accessing information regarding an existing product or service, on a form including a category field, a name field, a community field, a quantitative rating field, and a qualitative feedback field; such method comprising the steps of inputting identifying information for a product or service in a category, name, and community fields on the form, and inputting feedback regarding the product or service in the qualitative and quantitative fields.
It is yet a further object of the invention to provide a method for retrieving stored feedback or rating information for a service, a product, or a provider thereof, or for accessing information regarding an existing product or service, on a form including a category field, a name field, an e-mail field and/or a phone field, and a community field; such method comprising the steps of inputting identifying information for a product or service in category and name fields on the form, choosing a community from the community field, and receiving quantitative and qualitative output.
Yet a further object of the invention is to provide a data terminal for use by a user who is a member of a community, the data terminal comprising a receiving unit receiving, in response to a request for information about a product or service, feedback information only from the user""s community, and a display unit displaying received feedback information.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide a data terminal for use by a user who is a member of a community, the data terminal comprising an input unit receiving feedback data from the user about a product or service, and a transmitting unit coupled to the input unit and transmitting the feedback data and a community identifier to a feedback server.
In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a qualitative feedback interface utilizing voice or text massaging, and a quantitative ratings interface. The system enables voice, freehand writing and drawing, and keyboard (via phone buttons) text-based feedback. In order to enable freehand drawing or writing, the invention is capable of integrating a wireless pen device connected to a cellular telephone device which allows for creative, freehand communication of feedback and ratings. Such a pen device also enables short, freehand messages.
A principal embodiment of the invention is the integration of feedback searches based on the location of a user and searches which take into account the recommendations of the user""s own community. Such searches are, in a preferred embodiment, performed by users of mobile cellular telephones. The advantage of mobile cellular telephone feedback is that it can be done immediately, in real time, after receiving a service or a product, so that the impression is still fresh in the mind of the consumer and details are not forgotten. It should be noted, however, that the invention, as described herein, is not limited to providing and retrieving information in real-time, nor by a particular method of communication access (that is, wireless or wireline, or by any particular kind of data terminal). A user may provide feedback about a service or product any time after receiving the product or service. Similarly, a user may submit a request for feedback, and then retrieve the requested feedback at a later time.
The system enables feedback which is convenient, immediate, and easily entered. In a preferred embodiment, Obviously, a user can choose to provide feedback or ratings at any time convenient to the user, and not necessarily immediately.
Thus it can readily be appreciated that the present invention meets the need for a new method for creating and retrieving on-the-spot, real-time qualitative and quantitative feedback and ratings for products, services, and their providers. The system of the present invention is based on the feedback and ratings created by members of mobile and/or non-mobile communities, while a user can choose which community to consult.
Most users are quite willing to provide feedback for a service, a product, or their providers with which they have had experience, especially when their experience, whether positive or negative, is still fresh in their minds. Such feedback can be qualitative or qualitative. For example, a qualitative feedback may be a voice or text message describing what was particularly good, what was extremely bad, or what to pay attention to, and the like. Quantitative feedback may be based on a scale, such as 10 for xe2x80x9cexcellentxe2x80x9d, 5 for xe2x80x9cOKxe2x80x9d, and 0 for xe2x80x9cbadxe2x80x9d, or any similar rating scale which allows for logical comparison and analysis. The system can then provide for both qualitative feedback and a quantitative rating for a service, a product or their providers.
The present invention provides a new method of categorizing the feedback which makes use of a user-defined community. A user is able to search for ratings or qualitative feedback by consulting various communities, either those to whom he or she belongs or public communities that were established by the system (e.g., citizens of London, or British tourists in New York). When providing feedback, a user can specify whether he or she would like the system to use it for public communities. For example, if one is registered in a community as an Israeli and has feedback about an interesting place to visit in Thailand, the system can use this feedback for its public community (e.g., Israeli tourists in Thailand).
The present invention enables community members to define new services or products for which they would like to get ratings and feedback (also the system can create new items for evaluation). The invention is thus a dynamic system with updated databases that serve the interests of the various mobile communities as defined by the users.
The invention can provide feedback about many items that are user defined. This means that the system reflects a very good market sense, i.e., a rationalized and targeted market, as people tend to create feedback on items which they need and want. The system does not, necessarily, have to define new items for ratings, but can rely on the users to provide this.
As quality seems to be a substantial issue when a service or a product is concerned, the present invention sets a new direction for disseminating different user"" preferences. The invention is based on the common wisdom that community members will prefer to purchase a commercial service or a product after it has been recommended by their community members rather than simply getting the service or the product from the closest provider.
Using community-based feedback enables the accumulation of a smaller amount of qualitative data as feedback data. Thus, qualitative feedback can be easily examined instead of having a lot of data, such as resulting from surfing Internet virtual communities for ratings or feedback, a task often resulting in completely irrelevant information since the sources for such feedback and ratings are, in general, people with very different community interests.